5
OPINION

Thursday, June 6, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5
OPINION

I

t’s officially June, which means 
two things: The Peony Garden 
in Nichols Arboretum is due to 
bloom any day, and it’s time to cel-
ebrate Pride. LGBTQ+ Pride month 
has gone through many evolutions 
since its origins in New York in 
1970, where the first Pride was held 
to commemorate a year since the 
Stonewall riots. The Stonewall riots 
are a historical moment often cred-
ited as the beginning of the mod-
ern gay rights movement, and were 
bravely led by transgender women 
of color, including famous activists 
such as Sylvia Rivera and Marsha 
P. Johnson. The impact of these 
women and other gay rights activ-
ists was the harnessing of LGBTQ+ 
individuals’ political power, which 
translated into the creation of 
LGBTQ+ Pride month. 
Pride began as a political dem-
onstration, where the voices of the 
LGBTQ+ 
community 
demanded 
equal rights and protections. Pride 
still serves as a crucial political tool, 
pushing the importance of LGBTQ+ 
freedoms and safety — and this is 
especially salient when acknowl-
edging the tangible barriers still 
stand in front of LGBTQ+ Ameri-
cans. Political and social threats still 
exist. An individual can still be fired 
in 26 states because of sexual orien-
tation or gender identity. According 
to 2017 FBI hate crime statistics, a 
surge in hate crimes has dispropor-
tionately affected LGBTQ+ individ-
uals, and even more so those with 
intersectional marginalized identi-
ties. These issues are deserving of 
political attention and advocacy, 
but gradually this political focus of 
Pride has expanded into what it is 
widely viewed as today: a celebra-
tion.
This isn’t a plea to turn every 
visible moment as an LGBTQ+ 
individual into a rally cry against 
oppression. Pride can and should 
be used to celebrate queer life. 
Pride can and should be enjoyable. 
It exemplifies the importance and 
impact of LGBTQ+ people across 
the spectrum, and brings the com-
munity together in a way that allows 
individuals to praise their own and 
each other’s identities. What Pride 
shouldn’t be promoting, however, 
is the commercialization of these 
identities to benefit corporations 
and promote half-baked awareness 
of the issues.
Something 
that 
I’ve 
learned 
in my time as a Communications 
Studies major is that any aspect of 
your identity can and will be uti-
lized as a market. During Pride, the 

LGBTQ+ community becomes easy 
to tap, with newseeds and store-
fronts flooded with rainbow flags, 
while marketers clearly know that 
the community’s buying power has 
exceeded $1 trillion. 
At first glance, the idea of brands 
incorporating products that support 
LGBTQ+ visibility into their lines 
is commendable. Oftentimes, these 
products come with some social ben-
efit. For example, H&M’s Pride col-
lection “Stay True, Stay You” donates 
10 percent of the global sales price 
to the work of the United Nations’ 
Free & Equal campaign. Again, this 
is seemingly mutually beneficial: 
I get a cool new rainbow bodysuit 
while simultaneously donating to a 
significant cause. But the implica-
tions of this type of consumerism 
get a bit dicey when considering 
that H&M has several high-volume 
factories in China, a country with 
historic 
anti-LGBTQ 
legislation 
(despite very recent promises to the 
United Nations to address LGBTQ+ 
rights). This type of commercial 
social blindness is consistently seen 
throughout Pride, like when the 
biggest sponsors of city-wide Pride 
events are contributing greatly to 
issues such as income inequality, an 
issue affecting marginalized (espe-
cially those that are intersectional) 
identities at disproportionate rates. 
With the growth of positive senti-
ment regarding the LGBTQ+ com-
munity, brands frequently attempt 
to jump into these celebrations to 
make a profit with little found inter-
est in the actual issues.
Wearing or purchasing Pride 
merchandise from a big corporation 
is not something to be intrinsically 
ashamed of. Sometimes, corpora-
tions have a piece of clothing that 
you feel represents your version of 
Pride, and it’s okay to indulge that 
purchase. The issue arises when 
Pride becomes a market compe-
tition for who can earn the most 
LGBTQ+ dollars without consis-
tently supporting the community. 
Consumers need to hold companies 
accountable for their political and 
monetary actions, and the impact 
of these decisions on the LGBTQ+ 
community. While Pride should 
be a time to celebrate, the political 
origins of the holiday and the ongo-
ing needs of the community should 
remain at the forefront of one’s 
thoughts. Now, go buy a rainbow 
t-shirt from a local LGBTQ+ sup-
porting business, and happy Pride.

Pride isn’t a brand

ERIN WHITE | OP-ED

Erin White can be reached at 

ekwhite@umich.edu

PHILIP EIL | OP-ED

W

hen I was a junior at the 
University of Michigan, 
I experienced the worst 
panic attack of my life. At the time, I 
was on spring break from a semester 
abroad in Scotland, midway through 
a long-planned trip through Spain, 
France and Italy. It was, in theory, 
the highlight of my semester. But 
symptoms that I had begun to 
experience back at school in Ann 
Arbor had gotten worse. And on this 
trip they boiled over, culminating 
in a moment in Florence when I 
became convinced I was dying, 
which sent my heart racing and my 
mind whirring out of control. That 
moment was followed by aftershocks 
in the following weeks, including one 
day back in Scotland where I asked 
my dorm administrator to call an 
ambulance because I thought I was 
having a heart attack. The EMTs 
arrived and determined that I was 
fine, which added a big dose of 
embarrassment to my distress.
I share this story now as a 34 year-
old who only recently started taking 
my mental health seriously. Despite 
flare-ups of anxiety and depression 
in my twenties, I spent the decade 
after college burying myself in my 
work as a journalist and teacher 
and ignoring these issues when they 
arose. It took another crisis in 2017 — 
a case of burnout and depression that 
left me unable to work for weeks — to 
really wake me up. I’ve since spent 
a lot of time taking better care of 
myself, and also writing about men-
tal health topics, including anxiety, 
depression, burnout, therapy, toxic 
masculinity and suicide. The brain is 
now one of my beats, as a journalist.
Part of this journey has involved 
realizing just how much the college-
aged me could have benefited from 
the knowledge I have now. If I had 
a time machine, I might send it back 
to Bursley or the Brown Jug or the 
Big House, circa the mid 2000s, to 
whisper a few words in my own ear, 
and save myself a lot of future misery. 
Alas, I can’t do that. But I can write 
something for The Daily, and per-
haps be a bit of help to you.
The first thing I would share with 
the younger me — and to you, my 
fellow Wolverines — is the simple 
message that you are not alone. As 
a reporter on mental health, I’ve 
learned that anxiety disorders affect 
some 40 million adults in the U.S. 
and that, worldwide, so many people 
struggle with depression that the 
World Health Organization calls it 
the world’s leading cause of disabil-
ity. While mental health struggles 
can feel intensely isolating, that feel-

ing is an illusion. This is a huge part of 
being human, and there is much sol-
ace to be found in remembering that, 
and hearing other people’s stories.
I would also add that there is 
absolutely nothing to be ashamed of 
about struggling with your mental 
health. You wouldn’t be down on 
yourself for getting the flu or pull-
ing a muscle during a pickup basket-
ball game, because neither of those 
things would mean you’re a bad or 
a weak person. And the same idea 
applies to your brain. Having anxi-
ety or depression means that you’re 
someone with a human body that is 
prone to occasionally malfunction. 
It also means that we live in a world 
with countless mental health-aggra-
vating triggers, from social media 
to climate change to racism to mass 
shootings to dating apps to political 
chaos and so much more. 

If your mind is telling you that 
there is something to be ashamed 
of because of a mental health issue, 
that is a symptom of the issues them-
selves — or perhaps an outgrowth of 
our culture’s pervasive and totally 
unnecessary stigma. Confronting 
that stigma in yourself and others is 
a huge step toward becoming a men-
tal health-literate and overall good 
person.
College, for me, was the first time 
when mental health symptoms real-
ly started to affect my quality of life. 
And if you’re experiencing similar 
turbulence, the good news is that 
there is help for you. There are sup-
port groups, medications, therapists, 
self-help books, TED Talks, mindful-
ness apps — the list goes on. Every-
one’s mental health regimen is going 
to look a bit different, according to 
their schedule and needs and budget. 
And it may take you some time to fig-
ure out what works best for you. I’m 
still tweaking mine, years after first 
seeking help.
But the basic fact is you are sur-
rounded by time-tested, research-
backed, highly-accessible (and fully 
anonymous) ways for you to feel 
better. The University of Michigan 
isn’t just an athletic and academic 

powerhouse; it’s also a major center 
for mental health treatment. At Uni-
versity Health Service’s online hub 
for mental health, you’ll find links 
to all kinds of options and resources, 
including the office of Counseling 
and Psychological Services, well-
ness coaching, the MiTalk and 
Campus Mind Works databases and 
info about on-campus counseling. 
Taking steps to invest in your own 
mental wellbeing in college will 
place you so far ahead of the game 
here at school, and in the post-col-
lege “real world.” Plenty of people go 
their whole lives without doing this, 
and it’s something I wish I’d done 
years sooner.
There is a quote I like from the 
pioneering Swiss psychoanalyst Carl 
Jung: “Until you make the uncon-
scious conscious, it will direct your 
life and you will call it fate.” After my 
experiences in the last couple years, 
I now look back at college (and many 
years after) as a time when my life 
was significantly steered by fears and 
insecurities and depressive spells 
and unacknowledged pain from 
my childhood and adolescence. The 
choice to finally meet these issues 
head-on and start unpacking that 
unconscious was a way of taking 
more control over my own life.
Far from being an admission of 
weakness, addressing my mental 
health in recent years has been one 
of the biggest sources of strength 
and growth and wisdom and 
authenticity and happiness in my 
life. I go to therapy every two weeks. 
I’ve cut down on drinking. I take 
more frequent breaks from work. 
I’ve cultivated new hobbies and self-
care practices, and taken countless 
other large and small measures. In 
the process, I’ve become a better 
teacher, a better journalist, a better 
friend and a better member of my 
family and community. I’m simply a 
better version of me. (Note that “bet-
ter” isn’t “perfect.” I still have bad 
days, and weeks, and even months, 
and that is OK).
I hold the University of Michi-
gan professors in the highest 
regard. And yet, while you’re in 
Ann Arbor, the work you do in 
a therapist’s office, or support 
group, or mindfulness practice, or 
any other mental wellness-focused 
space, is just as important as any-
thing you’ll learn in a classroom. 
After all, your college education is 
only as useful as the health of the 
mind that holds it.

Taking steps toward improving mental health

Philip Eil is a 2007 graduate of the 

University of Michigan

The good news is 
that there is help 
for you.

